Thinking about being poor
May. 17th, 2005 02:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cpolkEvery once in a while I catch mentions of a community called ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
poor_skills and I decided to go check it out.
I read the last 20 entries, and maybe that isn't enough to get an idea of what the community is really like or anything but even after combing through the memories I kind of blinked because I didn't see a lot that had to do with the sort of things that I've picked up as mad poor skillz.
A couple of years ago,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matociquala sent me a box. She mailed it to me all the way from 'merica. It made me cry. It had one of the nicest bean mixes for chili I've ever had, lots of red beans, some ramen pride, peanut butter oreos (because face it, you need treats) and all kinds of last-forever staples in it - plus a bottle of 100 vitamin pills that were basic and no-nonsense.
I was in rough financial shape, rough mental health shape.stillnotbored completely saved my bacon with a cash injection that wended its way through ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
makeshiftdaisy to get to me, just when I needed it to get to me.
But I've had a lot of years of experience being poor. squeezing a nickel until it shrieked. and I know lotta you have been there too. and lotta you have crawled out from under debt. But the thing about poor skills is that sharing them is wealth, and I want to spend a bit of time talking about the poor.
Here's my first question:
When you hit a month where you aren't going to have enough for everything, what things do you do to make things stretch a bit farther?
I always worry about where my next meal is coming from. Boyfriends who buy me gewgaws are not are valued as those who feed me. I have SERIOUS trouble turning down the offer of a meal that I don't have to pay for. One of my signals that I'm doing well financially is how I'm eating - and when I'm doing great, I'm eating like a raja and going to restaurants. So when the money panic hits, Something I do is I go take inventory - of the pantry, the deepfreeze, the cupboards. I'm a fanatical list maker. I adore data. and nothing helps me knock down the rising panic more effectively than really looking at what I've got - I feel a bit silly freaking about how I'm going to be starving in two weeks when it turns out I've got 2 whole salmon, a pork shoulder roast and a beef chuck roast ON THE TOP LAYER of the deep freeze, but hell, you forget about this stuff. So I comb through everything, take inventory, and leave room for notations -
"beef chuck - pot roast? chop for stew? chili?"
"Whole salmon - teriyaki glaze, lemon and dill, cream sauce"
So I'm doing two things at once - I'm inventorying what I have on hand, and I'm brainstorming how things can go together, and I'm forming up a list of what will fill in the gaps, sorta tentatively.
One I'm done that, I grab the kitchen calendar and start making dates. Tuesday I'm going to do that beef roast, so sunday I've got to put it in the fridge to thaw. I don't put something down for every day - it's more like every four days, and fill in gaps from there. I'm making a plan. I feel more in control when I have a plan. I do as much planning as I can with what I have, right now.
After that I start looking at what I can use to fill in. I consult, like every good Comrade of the Just Society, Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating. It really helps me to keep things in proportion. Cheeze doodles have very little nutritive value. cheese does.
I check grocery store flyers, look for sales, look for value. I buy stuff on sale. I shop the produce section FIRST. I make meals around vegetables and fruit. When things are tight I choose more fresh produce that keeps longer, like potatoes, winter squash, carrots, apples, citrus fruits with rinds, and for perishable produce I'll buy some stuff that is a bit green but will develop. I shop the perimiter of the store first - dairy, meats, bakery. I read labels. I compare prices for the best buys. I stay the hell away from frozen convenience foods.
I look at it this way - if I have a hundred dollars to spend in the grocery store, I can buy ten things that cost ten dollars each, or a hundred things that cost a dollar each. a box of sugar corn pops costs seven dollars, and it will be gone in two days. a bag of oatmeal costs three dollars, and it will be gone in two weeks. I can get a 10 lb bag of potatoes for 5 bucks, or I can get two packages of Lipton scalloped potato sidekicks. Brown rice is more expensive than white rice, so I've got to think hard about which one I'm willing to eat/pay for. Everything I buy has to have more than one thing it can be used for. that sack of oatmeal is a breakfast food, it's the staple of my favorite from scratch muffin, It will make a nice crust for crumble, it will pad out ground beef. In the cart it goes. Corn pops is only good for being corn pops. Beat it, corn pops.
I had a potato salad yesterday that had chunks of apple in it. 'twas yum. and in poor mode I can make potato salad fairly cheap - eggs are inexpensive, russets are the cheapest potato on the block, and I can make mayo from scratch with a humble egg and some vegetable oil for WAY less money than buying a premade glass jar chock full of stuff that isn't egg and oil. a stick or two of celery - what's that, fifteen cents? an apple or two, and I've got carbohydrates, protein, and a bit of vitamin c. I also had tuna salad with chopped dill pickle on ritz crackers. Tuna can be had for less than a buck a tin on sale, and according to the food guide, that's all the meat I need in a day. okay, it's not grilled to medium rare ahi tuna steaks, nor is it Toro sashimi, but jeez, I've got time for that when times are good.
What do you do?
poor_skills and I decided to go check it out.I read the last 20 entries, and maybe that isn't enough to get an idea of what the community is really like or anything but even after combing through the memories I kind of blinked because I didn't see a lot that had to do with the sort of things that I've picked up as mad poor skillz.
A couple of years ago,
matociquala sent me a box. She mailed it to me all the way from 'merica. It made me cry. It had one of the nicest bean mixes for chili I've ever had, lots of red beans, some ramen pride, peanut butter oreos (because face it, you need treats) and all kinds of last-forever staples in it - plus a bottle of 100 vitamin pills that were basic and no-nonsense. I was in rough financial shape, rough mental health shape.
stillnotbored completely saved my bacon with a cash injection that wended its way through makeshiftdaisy to get to me, just when I needed it to get to me.But I've had a lot of years of experience being poor. squeezing a nickel until it shrieked. and I know lotta you have been there too. and lotta you have crawled out from under debt. But the thing about poor skills is that sharing them is wealth, and I want to spend a bit of time talking about the poor.
Here's my first question:
When you hit a month where you aren't going to have enough for everything, what things do you do to make things stretch a bit farther?
I always worry about where my next meal is coming from. Boyfriends who buy me gewgaws are not are valued as those who feed me. I have SERIOUS trouble turning down the offer of a meal that I don't have to pay for. One of my signals that I'm doing well financially is how I'm eating - and when I'm doing great, I'm eating like a raja and going to restaurants. So when the money panic hits, Something I do is I go take inventory - of the pantry, the deepfreeze, the cupboards. I'm a fanatical list maker. I adore data. and nothing helps me knock down the rising panic more effectively than really looking at what I've got - I feel a bit silly freaking about how I'm going to be starving in two weeks when it turns out I've got 2 whole salmon, a pork shoulder roast and a beef chuck roast ON THE TOP LAYER of the deep freeze, but hell, you forget about this stuff. So I comb through everything, take inventory, and leave room for notations -
"beef chuck - pot roast? chop for stew? chili?"
"Whole salmon - teriyaki glaze, lemon and dill, cream sauce"
So I'm doing two things at once - I'm inventorying what I have on hand, and I'm brainstorming how things can go together, and I'm forming up a list of what will fill in the gaps, sorta tentatively.
One I'm done that, I grab the kitchen calendar and start making dates. Tuesday I'm going to do that beef roast, so sunday I've got to put it in the fridge to thaw. I don't put something down for every day - it's more like every four days, and fill in gaps from there. I'm making a plan. I feel more in control when I have a plan. I do as much planning as I can with what I have, right now.
After that I start looking at what I can use to fill in. I consult, like every good Comrade of the Just Society, Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating. It really helps me to keep things in proportion. Cheeze doodles have very little nutritive value. cheese does.
I check grocery store flyers, look for sales, look for value. I buy stuff on sale. I shop the produce section FIRST. I make meals around vegetables and fruit. When things are tight I choose more fresh produce that keeps longer, like potatoes, winter squash, carrots, apples, citrus fruits with rinds, and for perishable produce I'll buy some stuff that is a bit green but will develop. I shop the perimiter of the store first - dairy, meats, bakery. I read labels. I compare prices for the best buys. I stay the hell away from frozen convenience foods.
I look at it this way - if I have a hundred dollars to spend in the grocery store, I can buy ten things that cost ten dollars each, or a hundred things that cost a dollar each. a box of sugar corn pops costs seven dollars, and it will be gone in two days. a bag of oatmeal costs three dollars, and it will be gone in two weeks. I can get a 10 lb bag of potatoes for 5 bucks, or I can get two packages of Lipton scalloped potato sidekicks. Brown rice is more expensive than white rice, so I've got to think hard about which one I'm willing to eat/pay for. Everything I buy has to have more than one thing it can be used for. that sack of oatmeal is a breakfast food, it's the staple of my favorite from scratch muffin, It will make a nice crust for crumble, it will pad out ground beef. In the cart it goes. Corn pops is only good for being corn pops. Beat it, corn pops.
I had a potato salad yesterday that had chunks of apple in it. 'twas yum. and in poor mode I can make potato salad fairly cheap - eggs are inexpensive, russets are the cheapest potato on the block, and I can make mayo from scratch with a humble egg and some vegetable oil for WAY less money than buying a premade glass jar chock full of stuff that isn't egg and oil. a stick or two of celery - what's that, fifteen cents? an apple or two, and I've got carbohydrates, protein, and a bit of vitamin c. I also had tuna salad with chopped dill pickle on ritz crackers. Tuna can be had for less than a buck a tin on sale, and according to the food guide, that's all the meat I need in a day. okay, it's not grilled to medium rare ahi tuna steaks, nor is it Toro sashimi, but jeez, I've got time for that when times are good.
What do you do?
